Honda Amaze bookings open

The much awaited Honda Amaze saloon will be launched in India on April 11. The carmaker is expected to price its first compact saloon here at around ₹ 6-7.5 lakh. The carmaker has started taking bookings for an amount of ₹ 21,000 (refundable) and is currently promising a 30-day delivery period.

The big news is that Honda's new 1.5-litre diesel engine will make its debut in the new Amaze. Along with this new engineered-for-India motor, the saloon will also be offered with the 1.2-litre petrol engine that is shared with the Brio hatchback. While the diesel-powered car will come with a five-speed manual gearbox, the 1.2-litre petrol variant will come with the options of both a five-speed manual and a five-speed automatic 'box.

While based on Honda's Brio hatch, the saloon gets subtle styling tweaks in the form of a different grille, fog lamps (only on the Indian version of the car) and new alloy wheels. The carmaker, in a brilliant engineering move, has given the Amaze a considerably longer wheelbase than the hatch, resulting in spacious interiors.

The introduction of the diesel engine here marks a significant step for Honda, which has stubbornly stuck to petrol motors till date and consequently lost a lot of fans to diesel motor-equipped competition. The Amaze could well be the carmaker's ticket to supremacy in the entry-level saloon segment here and could dethrone the current segment leader, the Maruti Suzuki Dzire, as well as pose a serious threat to other rivals like the Tata Manza, Toyota Etios and Mahindra Verito.